City on the Oscars: Oscars History

24 February 2011 16:00

Posted by Tim Oscroft

Share this:

Share

Tweet

+1

Email this

More channels

6-0. No, that’s not my prediction for how City will get on against Fulham, that was the score when it came to the Oscars won by Forrest Gump and The Shawshank Redemption at the 1995 Academy Awards ceremony.

And it could be argued that there, in a nutshell, is the whole conundrum of the 84-year history of the Oscars. There are winners, there are losers, there is joy, there are some genuinely head-scratching moments and then there is benefit of hindsight.

So, going off the judgement of the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the heart-warming tale of a well-meaning simpleton is a “better” film than the adaptation of a Stephen King short story. The former was a huge box office hit and seen as a “feel good” movie, whereas the latter was a relative failure on release and an all-together tougher proposition. But the prison-based melodrama developed legs as the years went by and regularly does well in all-time great polls, and maybe has kudos for not winning any Oscars.

John Wayne was never seen as a great actor, unlike Laurence Olivier, but they both won the Best Actor Oscar once – for the original True Grit and Hamlet respectively (it would be fun to see what they would have done in the opposite role!). It seems like Meryl Streep just has to walk near a camera to get at least a nomination – she holds the record for the most for an actor with 16, but has won “only” twice, for Kramer vs Kramer in 1979 and Sophie’s Choice in 1982.